Hacker News Reader

ashbrahmaon Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

That's a pretty good return for the Horowitz + Original founders team who bought it for $2.75 Billion in November 2010..

ashbrahmaon Foursquare Teams With Google For NFC Check-Ins Via Posters At Google I/O

Is Google going to give out the Nexus-S, so all attendees can check-in and become a Mayor?

ashbrahmaon Twitter in Talks to Buy TweetDeck

Looks like Twitter is a little worried about Ubermedia acquiring Tweetdeck and creating an alternate micro-blogging site..

ashbrahmaon Google fiber set to cause a revolution

Excited that they are thinking about coming to other parts of the Kansas City Metro:)

ashbrahmaon Ultra high-speed broadband is coming to Kansas City, Kansas

From the musical/stageshow Oklahoma:

"Everything's up to date in Kansas City They gone about as fer as they can go"

ashbrahmaon My Year as an Amateur Android Game Developer

Do you have any stats on what a featuring on Amazon Appstore does for an app?

ashbrahmaon RIM adds Android app support to BlackBerry PlayBook

Wow. It must be very humbling for RIM to allow Android apps to run on their devices.

ashbrahmaon Sequoia gives photo-sharing startup more money than they gave Google

Looks like they spent most of the money on the domain name. Color.com is now live..

ashbrahmaon Dramatic escalation in Japan (Fukushima Nuke Plant)

Didn't we just have a top story on HN yesterday which talked about how everything was safe?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2318980

ashbrahmaon Twitter to developers: no new Twitter clients

Not sure how this matches up to the 90% number:

http://twittersource.info/lastweek

This is based on tweets composed.

ashbrahmaon Brief Thoughts on Angel List

Reading him is like reading James Joyce Finnegans Wake. For those who haven't read the book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake

ashbrahmaon Review My App: WhoMails.Me. Scrape Your GMail Account For Contacts

Really good idea.

Anyone know of good tricks to extract contact info from Outlook email? ( XObni is good; but it doesn't let you export the data atleast not in the free version)..

ashbrahmaon Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance

Countries like India, Malaysia are starting to see a boom in Medical Tourism. It costs approximately $4500 for a open heart surgery at the best hospitals compared to $15-$20K in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism

ashbrahmaon Jeopardy Champion Ken Jennings Q&A about IBM Watson

If you are trivia geek like me, you should sign up for his Tuesday Trivia emails..

Send an email to tuesdaytrivia@ken-jennings.com to subscribe...

ashbrahmaon The Scariest Company in Tech

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-to-buy-78-billion-in-...

From link "Apple Inc. (AAPL 356.85, +2.31, +0.65%) is expected to purchase components used for its handheld devices from Samsung Electronics Co. worth about $7.8 billion this year, the Korea Economic Daily reported Monday, citing industry sources.

The paper also said that Samsung will supply Apple with liquid crystal displays, mobile application processors and NAND flash memory chips used for the U.S. company's iPhones and iPads.

If the contract pushes through, Apple will become Samsung's largest customer, the paper added."

ashbrahmaon How Jack Dorsey used Square to con VCs

Misleading title!!

ashbrahmaon Register for Google I/O 2011

Did you find one?

ashbrahmaon Android Patterns

Looks like this was done using Balsamiq. Definitely a handy tool for any designer!

ashbrahmaon Motorola XOOM priced at $800

Not sure how they can compete with the iPad at that price range.

ashbrahmaon Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

Google Goggles can already solve Sudoku using OCR--http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/01/...

So what you are suggesting isn't that far fetched.

ashbrahmaon How IKEA is structured to minimize tax and maximize control

Google cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda (Double Irish).

ashbrahmaon 4chan Founder Unleashes Canvas On The World

Anyone have a beta invite?

ashbrahmaon The Dilbert Black Swan Portfolio: a skeptical/practical guide to investing

In India, the rates are around 8-9% on Savings accounts.

ashbrahmaon The World's Happiest Countries

I am surprised Bhutan is not on this list. In Bhutan, they measure growth by GNH - Gross National Happiness and not by GDP:)

ashbrahmaon Apple will not allow Verizon to preload software on iPhone

The reason they are usually hard to remove is because they are burnt to the ROM.

ashbrahmaon Why Caltech Is in a Class by Itself

The Indian IIT's have a similar focus on academics. One key difference is that they still take in students by employing Affirmative Action. AA hasn't hurt the school's reputation one bit.

ashbrahmaon Steve's story - Google employee #13

What does he do now?

ashbrahmaon Notifo (YC W10) Android Client - Beta signup

How is this different from Urban Airship?

http://urbanairship.com/

ashbrahmaon How to Fly 35,000 Miles, Visit 4 Continents, 9 Countries, and 15 Cities for $418

Here's the link to buying coins. There is a $1000 limit for every 10 day period.

http://catalog.usmint.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Category...

ashbrahmaon SecDef Gates on Wikileaks

In defence of wikileaks - Economist Post:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/11/ov...